SINGER Beyoncé has been an entertainment icon for nearly three decades, metamorphosing from girl group leader and pop queen to Hollywood actor and business magnate.
But despite the variety of roles she’s taken on, the Houston megastar’s cowboy hat is always on: Queen Bey has always had a connection to country music.
Now, he is firmly entering his “yeehaw” era: “Cowboy Carter,” the second chapter of his “Renaissance” project, will be released this Friday at midnight (0400 GMT).
From Destiny’s Child’s choral vocals to the incredible vibe of 2016’s “Daddy Lessons,” Beyoncé has always paid homage to her Southern heritage, incorporating country music influences into her music, style, and visual art.
As a Texan raised by a mother from Louisiana and a father from Alabama, the singer has made it clear he will celebrate his roots to the fullest on this new project.
He has topped the charts with the first two singles from the album, “Texas Hold ‘Em” and “16 Carriages,” released during February’s Super Bowl.
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However, its popularity and influence has conflicted with country music’s predominantly white and male gatekeepers, who have long defined the genre’s boundaries.
He famously received racist comments following performing what was at the time the most country song he had ever performed, “Daddy Lessons,” at the 2016 Country Music Association Awards with The Chicks. But Bey did not back down.
“The criticism I faced when I first got into this genre forced me to push past the limitations placed on me,” he said recently on Instagram.
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“This second chapter is the result of the challenges I faced, and the time I took to wrap and mix genres together to create this work.”
Black artists have always been an important part of the genre, but criticism often occurs.
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“Every time a black artist releases a country song, the judgments, comments and opinions come thick and fast,” wrote Rhiannon Giddens, the Grammy winner who performed “Texas Hold ‘Em,” in her latest column for The Guardian.
“Let’s stop pretending that the outrage accompanying this latest single is regarding anything other than people trying to protect their nostalgia for a pure white ethnic tradition that never really existed,” Giddens said.
Guarding the Border
For Charles Hughes, author of “Country Soul: Making Music and Making Race in the American South,” Beyoncé’s country era is “claiming part of her musical identity and part of her connection to her Houston.”
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But “black and brown artists are required by a white-dominated music industry, and a white-dominated understanding of country music… to prove their sincerity,” he said.
“It has nothing to do with the music they make.”
In the last 15 years especially, Beyoncé has “really embraced and engaged with her persona as a Texan,” Hughes told AFP. “Anyone paying attention won’t be too surprised here.”
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“But it still triggers a huge amount of regret, once more, where you have people saying, ‘Oh, he can’t be country,'” he said, describing the backlash as old songs in Nashville “being used as a mechanism to police the boundaries -boundaries around music.”
Holly G, who founded the Black Opry to showcase black artists in country music three years ago, told AFP that “country music fans typically like to think of themselves as traditionalists, which is kind of ironic because it was black people who created country music.”
“There is always resistance when something new or different comes into the space,” he continued. “Unfortunately for them, he is much stronger than them.”
In 2022 Beyoncé released Chapter I of “Renaissance,” a collection of club songs rooted in history (AFP/Z-3)
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